Adaptive

Learning

How to Transform Business Success with

Adaptive Learning in the Enterprise
Contents

Current Learning Methods Are Out-Dated 4

The Rise of
Employee-Centered Learning 7

The Connected Employee 8

The Challenges Of Learning

In Business 9

Adaptive Learning &

Development 12

What is Adaptive Learning? 12

Where Peer-to-Peer Coaching

Comes In 15

How is support for adaptive

learning transforming
workplace performance? 15

What Approach to Adaptive

Learning Should You Take? 16

How To Implement An Adaptive

Learning Environment 17

Tips For Successfully

Implementing Adaptive Learning 19

The Benefits of Adaptive Learning 21

The Rise of Employee-Centered

Adaptive Learning and Development 26

2
45-50% Source: CEB 2015

of learning and development fails to deliver performance im-

provement and is wasted (scrappage).

Adaptive learning could change the odds.

Why you may experience scrappage and why you need

to adopt Adaptive Learning

Ineffective Delivery Content Not Low Learner

Directly Relevant Motivation

Content Quality Wrong Learners No Opportunity To

Issues Attend Apply

Examples Don’t Misalignment Low Organizational

Connect With Priorities Support

Insufficient Delivered At Insufficient Time To

Practice Wrong Time Apply

Inadequate Support Learners Already Lack Of Manager

Materials Know Info Support

3
You learn something
everyday. It’s true.
But if you take today, as an example, I read something,
watched a video, talked to a colleague to get some advice,
spoke to my manager for guidance, listened to the news on
the radio and shared a couple of articles with a co-worker
who’d reach out to me earlier in the day.

The problem we have is not one of learning, it’s one of being

told how to learn or being limited in the choice of how we
learn.

Ok, so I struggled at school. Not because I wasn’t bright

enough (I passed my MSc recently), but because the only
option of learning was to sit in the class. In one ear and out
the other is a phrase my overbearing teacher used to say. In
my head I wondered is it the pupil, the teacher or the fact
that there was only one way to learn this stuff – and I just
didn’t get it (note: fans of the Dead Poet Society raise your
hands now).

4
 Current Learning Methods
Are Out-dated
It's a bold statement to make; current business learning me-
thods are out-dated. We’re not making the most out of how
new technologies, communications mediums and interacti-
ve ways of learning have given us options.

Today, most employees heading to work, leave behind

more connected devices and computing power at home
than they have access to when they get to their place of
work. People have personal computers and laptops, tablets
and smartphones that can do everything.

It’s frustrating to think that in the workplace the technolo-

gies behind how we learn just don’t adapt and work the way
people live, learn and grow in their personal lives.

If people can access learning and communication when

and how they want to, then they're more likely to engage.

5
When you learn you use
areas of the brain.
112 Source:: Huffington Post

When everyone’s brain is different, why

would we assume that everyone learns in
the same way?

6
 The Rise of
Employee-Centered Learning
Traditionally, learning in business hasn’t exactly been focu-
sed around the employee. It has been made available for
the employee but only when it suits the company and when
the company feel training is needed.

In structure, it is a lot like learning in school (although even

that is changing!), in that you are sat in a ‘classroom’ or in a
workshop where an instructor shows you and teaches you
how to do something. This is a tried and tested way of tea-
ching and it works.

The issue is, it’s not the only way and it doesn’t suit everyo-
ne’s learning style. These types of training usually only hap-
pen when a company feels the team’s collective skills need
updating or when new regulations come into place that the
company has to remain compliant with.

What this method leaves out is the everyday learning and

the learning reinforcement that many people need to cont-
inually develop and progress in their roles.

Where this becomes a frustration in business is when em-

ployees aren’t progressing because they aren’t retaining
knowledge or engaging with that they learnt.

Employee-centered learning is a different approach to le-

arning and development that helps the individual develop,
and once a business starts focussing their thinking on the
employee, they can accelerate the development of indivi-
duals to make sure the whole team is progressing.

7
This isn’t an easy change to adjust to and some businesses
struggle to put the right strategies and methods in place
to deal with this shift. This then leaves employees finding
their own way of learning when they feel they need to. This
self-learning could be considered an example of informal
learning.

The Connected Employee

The connected employee is the idea that employees have
more technology at their disposal than ever before and
they’re using this technology to assist them in everyday bu-
siness.

Great – your employees are finding ways to self learn and

educate, no harm in that, right?

The trouble comes when your whole team have turned to

the Internet to learn the same thing, but their source of in-
formation is different. Everyone in your team is learning their
own version of the truth.

This is frustrating because the team loses its alignment and

people start to gather different ideas and methodologies for
the same thing. Strategies to re-align the team need to be
put into place, which causes more complications.

It feels at this point like resourcefulness and individuality

could almost be a bad thing and hinder the way the team
learns and aligns with one another.

8
The Challenges Of Learning
In Business
There are certain challenges that all businesses are facing
when it comes to learning and development. Forrester wor-
ked on some research, which was published in January
2016, which states “organizations need a variety of techno-
logy solutions to attract, retain, and engage their people.”
What’s particularly prominent in this statement that links
into learning in business is engagement.

Getting people to engage with not only their organisation

but also their learning in the workplace isn’t an easy task. It
is a challenge for the company and something that needs
resolving to ensure learning quality and knowledge retenti-
on remains in a company.

Here are some of challenges that come with learning in a

business environment.

Continuous Performance
This is all about a culture of continuous improvement. It can
be done through coaching, training and on-going commu-
nication. For many businesses, however, this is hard to keep
track of in terms of learning.

How can a manager be sure that their team is always impro-

ving and retaining information they’ve been taught. In fact,
knowledge retention is only a small part of the issue as just
retaining the knowledge doesn’t demonstrate a key under-
standing of application.

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Employee Engagement
When you consider that “employee engagement involves
the creation of a work environment where employees feel
emotionally connected to the organization’s mission and
goals” (TechRadar™: People And Talent Technology, Q1
2016), it becomes a challenge to embed this into a learning
environment.

Employees may be less likely to engage with the training if

they don’t feel it matches their learning style or if they don’t
think it’s relevant to their situation.

The benefit of successfully embedding employee engage-

ment into training is that it influences retention and ad-
vocacy as well as work effort.

Informal and Social Learning

Informal learning is where an employee or ‘learner’ searches
for information needed to complete a task without instructi-
on. Social learning is based around collaborative discussion
and working with others as a type of informal learning and is
an example of peer-to-peer coaching.

Social learning can have similar problems as employees

may not choose to work with the right people who have ex-
perience. This can lead to poor information being shared.

Informal and Social learning is a good thing to encourage in

a business learning environment but it still provides a chal-
lenge. The challenge comes back to the connected emplo-
yee who is looking for the answer but the answer might not
be aligned to the rest of the team. There is also no guaran-
tee they have found the right answer.

10
Learning Management Systems
and Virtual Classrooms
Learning Management Systems (LMS) can be very useful
for automating virtual and classroom-based learning but as
identified, learning and development is swaying away from
more traditional learning practices to adapt more to how
employees prefer to learn.

LMS still have their place in businesses but increasing en-

gagement levels using LMS is a challenge. In the same way
people don’t always engage with physical workshop sessi-
ons, they don’t take to virtual classrooms either.

Getting it right:

Continuous Performance
• Culture of ongoing improvement
• Team Development

Employee Engagement
• Connected and engaged employees
• Higher retention, advocacy and work effort

Informal & Social Learning

• Self-proficient learning
• Peer-to-peer coaching

LMS & Virtual Classrooms

• Automate virtual learning
• Reinforce with other content types (to in-
crease engagement)

11
 Adaptive Learning &
Development
As highlighted, there are many frustrations and challenges
within a business learning environment and out-dated lear-
ning strategies and methodologies aren’t helping.

With the rise of employee centered learning and connected

employees, new methods of learning are being adopted to
tackle some of the challenges faced.

Adaptive learning is one of those solutions. It aims to not

only tackle the challenges but actually remove the frustra-
tions and use the solutions to these challenges as a com-
petitive advantage.

What is Adaptive Learning?

Some definitions describe adaptive learning as using tech-
nology to aid and assist learning and development whilst
others define it as a strategy or method that uses computers
and devices to give access to interactive teaching content.

There are even interpretations that sway away from the pu-
rely digital and technology side of the term and define ad-
aptive learning more as a learning strategy where compa-
nies assess previous successes and use these as a basis for
a learning strategy.

In many senses, adaptive learning is still a relatively new

term and possibly known only to those who apply it. It’s even
possible that those applying an adaptive learning strategy
don‘t know it as adaptive learning.

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Here‘s how I see adaptive learning:

It is an approach to learning that focuses on

how an individual learns (as opposed to a
team or group) and involves providing content
that is suited to that individual’s learning style.

This approach is then assisted by technology - although

technology is only the delivery, not the answer.

The idea is that you adapt to the team’s individual learning

styles, which in turn increases engagement and learning re-
tention. It is about providing people with a process or me-
thod to adopt a learning style that supports their world.

Lets use an example: A project or sales team need training

for a new product being sold by the company. The first step
is a training workshop that everyone gets involved with, i.e.
classroom learning.

Adaptive learning takes this learning a step further and pro-

vides training content in a way that appeals to the individual,
rather than the team. Some team members may prefer to
learn through video and others might find documentation
to read better. By providing both, you are catering to the in-
dividual learning styles of the team.

Adaptive learning is more than just adapting to the style of

learning though, it is also about providing content for when
the individual wants to learn.

Enter technology – technology, and specifically mobile de-

vices and tablets are the perfect outlet for providing adap-
tive learning content. Most people carry their phone with
them and if they can access learning content on their de-
vice, they can learn when they want and when it suits them.

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Adaptive learning should support the tech that is already in
the employee’s hand and it has to be relevant to their situa-
tion. That means being relevant to their experience and also
relevant to their objectives.

One of the biggest issues with traditional learning styles is

application. Your team might learn a lot from a workshop
but if they aren’t applying the skills or knowledge learnt re-
gularly, then it’s easily forgotten.

The technology that assists an adaptive learning approach

can help to put knowledge into practice through quizzes
and gamification. Based on this, team members can see
where there are gaps in their knowledge and either learn
more from the content provided or request help from em-
ployees who know more about the subject. This is an ex-
ample of peer-to-peer coaching.

Peer-to-peer coaching fits hand-in-hand with adaptive lear-

ning as some people find learning from others with experi-
ence the best way to learn something new. As this approach
is all about adapting to how the individual learns, peer-to-
peer coaching may be encouraged as part of the team or
company culture. This adds context to the learning, as the
information is based on the experience within the company.
.

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 Where Peer-to-Peer Coaching
Comes In
People learn from people. They learn through experience.
So peer-to-peer coaching is about advice and develop-
ment. The idea is that if you can build a learning organizati-
on where everybody is learning from everybody, the orga-
nization is far better for it.
Where properly implemented peer-to-peer coaching helps
is to make sure social learning is done well with the right
content - it’s all about knowing who could help.

What you really want to do in an organization is for every

employee to know everything about your business, to know
everything about your products, to know everything about
your customers, to know everything about everything.

And the only way you can really do that is if you have people
who know certain things, to share and pass the knowled-
ge on, and build this learning organization. Knowing where
people are who can actually help you do that is also a very
supportive aspect of learning.

How is support for adaptive

learning transforming
workplace performance?
At the moment, the way people are learning is a stick and a
carrot approach. Companies are hitting (not literally!) people
saying, „You must do this module. If you don‘t do this modu-
le, you don‘t get your bonus. If you don‘t do this...“ So some
employees are doing the training, but reluctantly. They‘re
not doing it because they care about their learning; they‘re
doing it because of the end goal.

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What you can do with adaptive learning, is give team mem-
bers what they‘re interested in. So they can learn what
they‘re interested in. Of course, they‘re still going to have to
learn some less interesting stuff but again, you can present
that in a way that is more engaging and more entertaining
for them to participate in.

You can supply this learning and information through the

technology that employees have in their pocket. Mobile
phones and tablets have become such a big part of ever-
yday life that supplying content through this engaging and
interactive medium makes sense. The connected emplo-
yee is already using their phone for informal learning but
this way you can manage the content.

Adaptive learning can re-align your team’s thinking so ever-

yone is being served the same information in the way that is
suited to their world.

What Approach to Adaptive

Learning Should You Take?

Short, quick sessions. Not trying to turn around and say,

„We‘re going to teach you all there is to know about X, Y, Z,
in one session.“ What you’re going to turn around and say is:
„We‘re going to teach you one point in the next 5 minutes.
You’ve got one point today and then tomorrow you can le-
arn another couple of points, and then another few points.”
So it‘s about giving your team a way that doesn‘t feel intru-
sive and they‘re not fighting to fit it into their day. It’s a form
of micro learning.

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With micro learning, we can give training in short snippets
when it suits the employee, these are the things that can be
done on the way to get a coffee, we can increase the en-
gagement of employee learning. They‘re not huge pieces,
and that‘s one of the key things. “It’s little and often, piece
by piece”

Learning is like a jigsaw puzzle, it’s about putting the pieces

in place as they fit.

Some people like to do the edges first. Some people like

to do the middle bit. Everybody wants to do it in a different
way. So what we have to do is help them put those simple
small pieces in place that connect to the next piece that
build up to the bigger picture.

How To Implement An Adaptive

Learning Environment
One of the key things to develop a learning environment
is listening and feedback. If you don‘t actually listen within
your organization, an adaptive learning environment isn’t
going to happen. Feedback and then acting on that feed-
back is a vital part of the first phases of building an adaptive
learning environment. Otherwise, you don’t know what you
need to learn.

The next step is all about enabling leaders throughout the

business. That’s not to say everyone suddenly gets a pro-
motion to a dubious title of ‘leader’, but instead the environ-
ment should allow natural leaders to help their peers and
teach.

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In terms of leading from a traditional perspective, managers
should know what it going on throughout the business and
most importantly within their team. This will enable them to
encourage learning in the right places and understand who
in the team can help who.

The best idea can come from anywhere in that business,

but if the business is not listening, the business cannot learn
from those.

It‘s then about if somebody has an idea, how do we actually

harness that? How do we bring the idea into the company.
Following on from which, you need to learn which people
can do what. Using technology and applications can help
give employees a voice and in turn gives the opportunity to
harness someone’s ideas.

It all comes back to that listening and feedback aspect of

the business. You could consider using Pulse Surveys to get
instant feedback, that’s quick and timely, capturing the he-
artbeat of the organisation, allowing everybody to be a part
of it.

Change and fear of change is what stunts the implementa-

tion of new ideas, including adaptive learning. If you try to
tell everyone that a new process is coming into place wi-
thout first explaining why it’s coming into place, people will
disagree with the change. If there is an air of transparency
and the changes are clearly defined with the benefits be-
forehand and the reason for the changes, then people are
more likely to support it.

Allowing feedback to the changes gives people a way to

voice their opinion and feel more like they are a part of
what’s changed and how it’s done.

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 Tips For Successfully
Implementing Adaptive Learning

Honesty and transparency

There needs to be transparency from the top down. Get

buy-in from the top and then make sure everyone in the
company or in your team (depending how widely you are
implementing an adaptive learning environment) under-
stands the changes and their role in the change.

Honesty and transparency is also a part of adaptive lear-

ning. There needs to be transparency between team mem-
bers so people don’t feel like their ideas will be ignored by
others but helped by others in a way to develop and learn
as a team.

Willingness

People have to want to learn. Adaptive learning isn’t a silver

bullet to make everyone in the company suddenly become
experts, it is about providing alternative and new ways to le-
arn and retain knowledge and recognising that people learn
in different ways.

It’s also about providing new platforms to learn from and

using technology that many are already comfortable with
can help with this. There is a chance to provide more infor-
mation above and beyond a one-day training session and
helping put knowledge into practice.

If people are willing to learn, they are more likely to become

engaged in an adaptive learning environment.

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 Give Employees a Voice

Employees need to be able to give feedback and voice their

opinions, without it, you’ll never learn where people are fal-
ling down and need development. If they feel like they’re
being heard and listened to, they’re more likely to engage
with the company and learning. Technology can allow em-
ployees to have a voice and develop a commitment to the
organisation.

Alignment

Aligning the learning for each individual is vital. People learn

in different ways and only by embracing this will you truly
create an adaptive learning environment. In turn, people will
find it easier to learn and retain knowledge as they are lear-
ning in a way that suits them.

So the learning has to be aligned to personal needs

Content
This goes hand-in-hand with alignment. The same way you
have to align the learning for the individual, you also need to
create the content that fits with the individual learning style.

It’s then important to align the content with current training

materials and training methods.

So it‘s bringing the pieces together, and maybe you can say
from looking at what‘s in the LMS and take smaller learning
pieces as opposed to big chunks. Break the piece, instead
of having the picture in 100 pieces, let‘s break that down to
1000 pieces.

20
 The Benefits of Adaptive Learning
Adaptive learning will have different benefits to different
people. For example, it is beneficial to the employee becau-
se it gives them flexibility to learn in their own time in short
snippets but it’s also beneficial to the company because it
is engaging and employees are more likely to engage with
the content and learn.

So whilst there are lots of different scenarios and examples

of how adaptive learning is beneficial to the parties invol-
ved, here are some of the benefits outlined.

Give Employees a Voice

Adaptive learning is about learning and developing when

the time suits and when the training is relevant to the objec-
tive or task in hand. Obviously you could say that learning a
job an hour before you need to do it is too late, but equal-
ly, learning the skills 6 months prior and never using them
might be considered too early.

With adaptive learning, an employee can learn the skill in

advance and then keep their knowledge fresh by partaking
in quizzes or learning new updates through new content.

It’s all about learning when the time is right.

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 Technology
This is arguably a big part of adaptive learning and some de-
finitions pitch the whole method around technology. When
adaptive learning is implemented correctly, there shouldn’t
be barriers as to the tech that can be used to learn and this
means users and team members can learn from the tech in
their pockets.
They can use their phone or their tablet to learn short snip-
pets of content on the go.

Or they can still use their laptop or desktop if they would

rather. Adaptive learning embraces technology to assist le-
arning and means you can learn on the go as you want to.

Remember: Technology is the delivery, not the answer.

Flexibility
There are a few different ways that the adaptive learning
method is flexible. First, you have content. With technolo-
gy being used, you can provide content in different formats
such as videos, text, images, documents and quizzes. All of
these ways of learning suit different people and the ability
to mix and match the learning styles can give the perfect
combinations for someone.

Beyond the content, you have to consider the time flexibi-

lity that is provided through adaptive learning. As seen in
the example above, employees can be flexible in terms of
when they partake in learning and training. If a salesperson
has a big pitch coming up, they may want to learn the pro-
duct specific details in small chunks of learning in the days
leading up to the pitch to ensure they remember the right
details.

22
 Engaging

Whilst classroom style learning and more traditional Lear-

ning Management Systems (LMS) still have a role in busi-
ness environments, they haven’t always been considered
the most engaging way of learning.

To ensure knowledge retention from training, an adaptive

learning environment can support classroom-training ses-
sions with extra, more engaging content that is relevant to
the user’s situation.

For training to work effectively, people need to want to do

the training and short bite size pieces of engaging video or
gamified quizzes that put training into context can help with
this.

Rewarding

When investing time into something (such as training), it is

good to get something out of it. It doesn’t have to be a phy-
sical reward and it doesn‘t need to be a bonus, but even a
point system with gamified learning can offer reward and
encourage employees to learn.

One of the benefits of an employee centered adaptive le-

arning environment is rewards and the effect they have on
employee engagement and willingness to take part in trai-
ning.

Remember: It’s not just about cash rewards. Research in

recent years has shown that employees, and particularly
millennials, are more interested in training and develop-
ment and even work/life balance than they are cash bonu-
ses. (http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/242858)

23
 Progressive

One of the keys to any training is making sure that the trainee
feels like they have advanced from the training. Adaptive
learning can aid this by using technology to test how much
was learnt in a training session or from training content.

Quizzes and gamification can test someone’s knowledge

on the go with instant feedback as to how they’ve done. If
they do well, they feel that they have learnt something and
that they are making progress.

Adaptive learning supports progression through offering

additional content in a convenient way.

Interactive

An age-old concept is that it’s easier to learn by doing.

When you learn to drive, you don‘t sit in a room and get told
how to drive, you get in a car and you learn by doing (with
supervision of course).

There is no reason this technique shouldn’t be applied to

all learning. Okay, in some scenarios you can’t just jump in
and do something without some prior knowledge and the
situation needs to be there for you to try it.

Adaptive learning creates a way to test knowledge with

context and relevance and provides a platform to create in-
teractive scenarios.

24
All of these benefits can help improve knowledge retenti-
on and increase employee engagement. Adaptive learning
provides that flexible and engaging way of learning with a
choice of how you learn and when you learn.

25
The Rise of
Employee-Centered
Adaptive Learning and
Development

By focusing on you, the individual, and adapting the way this

information is given to you, you are more likely to engage
with it. By making sure your colleague sat next to you knows
this information and has access to the same information as
you, it’s easy to ensure that you’re learning from a reputable
source rather than somewhere on the Internet.

Using a content hosting system or application, a business

can make sure everyone has access to the same, correct
information in different mediums of content.

If adaptive content is adapting to the individual learning sty-

le of your team members so they engage with the content
and retain the knowledge, then you are beginning to solve
the challenges and frustrations of business learning.

You can monitor continuous performance through gamifi-

cation and quizzes.

You can increase employee engagement through content

that supports your employees style of learning.

You can encourage an informal and social learning environ-

ment with faith that the information is aligned in the team
and correct.

26
 You can reinforce virtual learning and LMS with extra cont-
ent that is interesting and engaging.

You can embrace the connected employee and focus the

content in a way that they like to learn – through their tech-
nology.

Adaptive learning is the all in one solution for a business

learning environment.

Use Qnnect to help implement your adaptive learning

environment into business.

Qnnect, the all-in-one employee engagement, commu-

nication and adaptive learning software.

www.qnnect.com
london@qnnect.com
+44 1252 302127

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